Category: Boeing

Salmah Hayati Ghazali, deputy director general of a Malaysian government development agency

At the Malaysia pavilion inside one of the exhibition halls here at Farnborough on Friday, tears welled in the eyes of Salmah Hayti Ghazali, a Malaysian goverment official, as she spoke to me about the shocking and cruel news that came late yesterday.

“It’s incomprehensible,” she said. “We did not think this could happen. It was out of our minds.”

“It’s no fault of ours,” Ms. Salmah said, struggling to find a better word than “unfair” to describe the murder of of 298 innocent travelers.

“I do feel the world is with us,”she said. “When I came this morning and I saw every flag at half mast, that was something consoling.”

The downing of the 777 has cast a pall over Farnborough.

The rows of international flags lining the entrances to Farnborough are at half mast today, in mourning over the tragedy.

And Boeing canceled the planned flight display of its 787-9.

Yet the living must go on. Ms. Salmah, deputy director general of MARA, a Malaysian government development agency, was at the Air Show Friday to welcome a group of about a dozen young Malaysian engineering students who attend universities around the U.K.

Thursday is the last business day at the Farnborough Air Show and this was a quiet one, with nothing happening after the closing Airbus press conference in the morning. I left the Boeing chalet to head back to my hotel in central London at 4 p.m. local time. At that time, no one there had heard about…

Tim Keating, Boeing’s chief political operator in the halls of Congress, this week is frequenting the company chalet at the Farnborough Air Show and the related aviation industry dinners and receptions in central London.

He’s offering reassurance to Boeing’s foreign airline customers, some of whom are worried that the controversy in Congress around the Export-Import Bank could end the financing they need to buy jets. And he’s hosting the many U.S. political delegations here as part of Boeing’s intense lobbying effort to save the bank, whose authority to operate expires in September.

Boeing this week at the Air Show gave the first public details about its plan to use robots in assembling 777 fuselages. Initially on the 777, and then on the 777X, it will use German machines that can drill and fill 60,000 rivet holes on each plane. Missed in the initial reports was this…

On the opening day of the Farnborough Air Show, the Boeing 787-9 did a spectacular touch-and-go in the afternoon flying display, coming down and touching the tarmac as if to land, then powering up and climbing steeply away.

He said the airport authority won’t allow either Airbus or Boeing to do it again this week.

“We can all climb steeply,” said Chapman. “What you mustn’t do is turn straight away (on take-off). If the wing hits the ground, it’s over. Their wingtip was 15 feet off the ground. They don’t like you being close to the ground.”

Tuesday, the Boeing communications team here had a decidedly conspiratorial explanation: That Airbus had whispered to the Air Show authorities and spiked such displays so as not to be shown up.

Bjorn Kjos, chief executive of an airline that had a nightmare experience with its first two 787s last year, could now moonlight as a salesman for the Dreamliner.

Bjorn Kjos, CEO of Norwegian, with his Skytrax award at Farnborough

Norwegian Air, his new international low-cost carrier, now has a fleet of seven Dreamliners that he’s flying on very long routes such as London to Bangkok and back. With minimal down time at each end, that’s up to 18 hours flying in a day.

“The Dreamliner is the first airplane built to fly such high utilization. It’s performing to it,” said Kjos. “It’s going better and better actually.”

The forthcoming 777X large widebody jet will have an interior cabin with the same pleasant passenger features that have been a hit on the 787 Dreamliner: large windows, less dry air, and a lower cabin altitude pressurization.

All those features were introduced with the Dreamliner and touted as an advantage of the carbon fiber composite that’s used to make the fuselage. That material is stronger and lighter than aluminum and doesn’t corrode when the surface is wet.

The 777X will have a traditional aluminum fuselage, yet it will have the same features,

Boeing said the 777X fuselage, which will be assembled in a new building now under construction in Everett, “will be built using automated, guided robots that will fasten the panels of the fuselage together, drilling and filling the more than approximately 60,000 fasteners that are today installed by hand.”

Boeing spokeswoman Elizabeth Fischtziur said the new robotic system “will be implemented first on today’s 777” and once its high rate production capabilities are validated it “is expected to be baseline to 777X fuselage production.”

As expected, the European jetmaker launched a new model of its A330 mid-size widebody jet, the A330neo. Predictably, sales chief John Leahy made confident claims that it will best Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.

On the eve of the Farnborough Air Show in London, Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief Ray Conner announced a new high-density version of the forthcoming 737 MAX family, something long requested by leading 737 customer Ryanair.

He also talked down the threat from the expected announcement by Airbus Monday that it will launch an update of its A330 mid-size twinjet with new fuel-efficient engines.

And Conner flatly rejected any compromise in the current political controversy over the U.S. Export-Import Bank.